The Smell of Snow
by StarryPeaches
Summary: The entire story, which I excerpted for EspoirDio's wonderful advent calendar collaboration. Niles and CC reflect on Christmases past. Please review for the next chapter!
1. Chapter 1

CC tucked her legs underneath her and pulled the throw around herself securely. She had turned off all the lamps in the house, but she'd plugged in the colored lights on the Christmas tree, and a fire still crackled brightly in the fireplace. She leaned forward and plucked a candy cane off a protruding branch and nibbled at the end of it, gazing at the tree. She glanced down at her watch.

_11:30.__He __should__ be__ home__ by __now_. She sucked at the end of the candy cane. _I __wish __he__ didn__'__t __have __to__ work__ late __nights._ _I __wish__ I __could __fall __asleep __without __him_. _I __wonder__ if__ other__ wives __need __their __husbands __as __much __as__ I __need __mine.__Maybe__ I__ should __make__ some__ girlfriends__ and __ask__ them__ about __it._ A quiet noise from the baby monitor by her side interrupted her ruminations. She turned up the volume, wondering if she needed to go check on her baby, but she was quickly comforted by the gentle smacking sounds that her daughter made so frequently since she'd begun teething. CC set down the baby monitor and smiled to herself. No one had been more surprised than her when she'd fallen instantly in love with her baby girl. CC had taken to motherhood as naturally as if she were navigating a multimillion-dollar business deal, and moreover, she was having fun. As tiring as it was, CC loved being a mother.

Just as CC had begun to settle back into the sofa, she heard the muffled jingle of Niles' keys in the front door. She twisted around to watch him come in, a relieved smile tugging at her lips. Niles opened the door, and a draft of icy air followed him inside. From her nest on the sofa, CC observed that the snow had stopped falling, but the air was so cold she could actually see the hovering frost.

"Shut the door, servant, it's colder than a well digger's butt out there!" CC said, her eyes dancing.

"I'll take your word for it, darling. You're the one with enough experience to tell," he replied, shrugging out of his coat and pulling off his boots.

"You're a pathetic excuse for a man," CC told him, tipping her face upward for his kiss as he approached the back of the couch.

"Ditto," he replied, smiling, and lowered his mouth onto hers.

After several long moments of breathless kissing, CC pulled her lips from Niles'. They smiled at each other gently.

"You taste like peppermint," breathed Niles.

"You smell like snow," replied CC. Then she held out her arms. "Come here."

Niles circled around the end of the couch and eased onto the cushions. CC lifted the edge of her throw and tucked it in around Niles as he slid an arm around her back and pulled her legs over his own. CC finished tending to the blanket and rested her head against Niles' shoulder. They sat quietly for a moment, snuggling together in front of their fireplace and contemplating their Christmas tree.


	2. Chapter 2

"CC," Niles began.

CC tilted her head and kissed the underside of his jaw. "Yes?"

"Do you know," continued Niles, "this will be my first real Christmas?"

CC pulled back to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I've never celebrated Christmas the way they do in movies. The way the Sheffields do. With the tree and caroling, and stockings and presents on Christmas morning. Christmas was always a… difficult time for me."

CC snorted. "Bet you it was worse for me."

Niles snorted. "Bet it wasn't."

"How much?" asked CC.

"How much what?"

"How much do you want to bet that my Christmases were worse than yours?"

Niles barked out a sharp laugh, then sobered when CC raised a stern eyebrow. "Are you serious?"

"Almost always," CC deadpanned.

"All right," replied Niles, smiling a little sadly. "You know the prank we're planning to pull on the Sheffields at Christmas dinner? If I win, I get to be the one to set it off."

CC whistled low. "That's a huge forfeit. That prank is going to be one for the ages."

"Are you in, Babcock?"

"Lay it on me, Butler Boy. How was Christmas so terrible for you?"

Niles eased CC's head back against his shoulder and settled their entwined bodies back into the cushions.

"I was always working," he began. "You know I was born on the Sheffield estate in England, where my parents were servants. My mother worked in the kitchens, and my father was an underbutler. The Sheffields were good and fair employers, but they loved to entertain, so Christmas was a busy time in their household. They threw lavish Christmas parties every year. You would have loved those parties, you elitist social climber," Niles added, pressing a kiss to the top of his wife's head. "They were full of pureblood aristocrats."

"Purebloods are my favorite kind."

Niles chuffed out a laugh. "Well. Servitude in England is much like aristocracy – you're born into your title, and you never really develop an identity outside of your position. My father was an underbutler, and his father was an underbutler, and presumably his father was as well. So when I was born, my fate was determined. I might as well have been a butler from birth."

Niles shifted slightly and held CC closer.

"I began serving as soon as I could toddle. My parents would send me into the Sheffield nursery to deliver toys to Jocelyn and Maxwell and their cousins, while the staff watched. Everyone was delighted – I was a natural." Niles smirked self-deprecatingly.

"So the Sheffields would throw these lavish Christmas parties, which meant that the entire staff – and especially my parents – were overworked and exhausted for a month before and afterward. I helped in the kitchens as a child, and when I was old enough to learn how to blend in, I held trays of hors d'oeuvres. The trick is to look refined enough to fit into the aristocratic environment, but generic and plain enough not to call attention to oneself. Like a piece of furniture."

CC smiled ruefully into her husband's shoulder.

"So that was it. The servants worked their fingers to the bone every Christmas, and since I can't remember a time when I wasn't a servant, Christmas has always meant exhaustion and anxiety and, well, anonymity. Trying to pretend that I was an automaton rather than a little boy, and trying not to let on that I saw the Sheffield children stuffing themselves with cookies on Christmas eve and opening mounds of gifts on Christmas morning, while I scrubbed their dishes from the night before."

CC tightened her right arm around Niles' chest and threaded the fingers on her left hand into his hair. "Did you parents remember to wish you a merry Christmas, at least?" she asked him quietly.

"They did," he replied. "They did. And they always managed to come up with some present for me, even when they really had nothing to give. One year my mother knitted a sweater for me, and one year my father borrowed a valet's bicycle and taught me how to ride it. I just… I couldn't help noticing the disparity between my childhood and the Sheffields', especially the year when old Mr. Sheffield gave Max his first car. That year, my mother gave me a tin of ginger snaps."

"Ginger snaps are your favorite," remarked CC, stroking her husband's hair.

"Ginger snaps are not a Rolls Royce," replied Niles. He turned his nose into CC's hair and pressed a kiss to her temple. "All right, witch. Your turn. How was Christmas so terrible in the wealthy, privileged world of Chastity Claire Babcock?"


	3. Chapter 3

_**This chapter is kind of grim! Rated M, I guess, but not for fun reasons. Thanks for your wonderful feedback. **_

_"All right, witch. Your turn. How was Christmas so terrible in the wealthy, privileged world of Chastity Claire Babcock?"_

CC's fingers slowed their stroking in his hair, and she turned her head to gaze into the waxing fire.

"The earliest Christmas I remember was the year I was five," CC began. "At some point, one of my mother's friends had given me a bunny as a pet, and my mother promptly forgot about it. I don't think any of our servants knew that I had a rabbit in my room, so no one helped me to feed it or take care of it. And I was five. It died on Christmas Eve, probably from starvation, and I was terrified that my mother would find out. I tried to hide it – I think I put it behind a sofa in the parlor or something, thinking that if I hid it far away from my bedroom, no one would think that I was responsible for it."

Niles felt his blood begin to run cold and a sense of terrible foreboding began to bloom in his chest. He pulled CC closer, as though he could absorb her into his body.

"The next morning, my brother and sister and my cousin Gigi and I ran down the stairs to see if Santa had come during the night. There were presents stacked high under the tree, and we started to separate them into piles for each child." CC swallowed hard.

"But when we had finished sorting, there was only one present in my pile, about the size of a shoebox."

Niles clasped his wife to his chest and felt his eyes filling with tears. "Oh, no, CC, no."

"It was so strange to see that one box compared to my siblings' huge piles of gifts that they all stopped to watch me open it. You can…" CC cleared her throat against the rise of tears she thought she'd already shed for this memory. "You can imagine how we reacted when I opened the box. I think DD was crying even harder than I was, and Noel actually threw up. My mother made me take the box into the backyard and bury the bunny, right then and there. I think-" she pressed her damp face into Niles' sweater and snuffled hard. "I think she was trying to teach us a lesson, but I can't for the life of me imagine what it was."

Niles was utterly silent, tears pouring down his cheeks. _After__ a __trauma __like __that, __she __should __have __grown __up __to__ be __a __serial __killer_, he thought. _No__ one __would __have __blamed __her __for__ turning __into __a __psychopath, __and__ instead __she__'__s __learned __how__ to__ be __loving __and __intimate __and-_ Niles' train of thought was cut off at the feel of CC's fingers wiping the tears from his face.

"Oh, Niles, don't cry," CC soothed, kissing his eyes and his streaked cheeks. "It wasn't dead bunnies in shoeboxes every year. Some years were actually pretty normal."

Niles gritted his teeth without opening his eyes. "CC, I am going to kill your mother. And your father, for letting her do that to you."

"Don't, Niles, please. It's done. Just help me give our daughter the Christmases we never had, okay?"

"Okay." Niles released a shaky breath and opened his eyes, releasing another small flood of anguished tears. "Okay."

"And also, you know…"

"What is it, darling?"

"Concede that I win the bet."

Niles barked out a noise that was not quite a laugh. "God, yes, CC. You win. There's no contest. You had the Christmases that nightmares are made of."

"So I get to pull the prank on the Sheffields?" CC's warm palms cupped his face as she continued to wipe the tears from his eyes with her thumbs.

"Yes, darling, the prank is all yours."

Niles bent his head forward so that his forehead touched his wife's.

"CC, I'm going to make it up to you," he whispered. "Your horrible Christmases – I'm going to make them up to you."

CC leaned forward to press a kiss to his lips. "You make it up to me every day, Niles."

Niles eased his arms beneath CC, scooping her up and setting her down on his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck, their foreheads still resting against each other.

"I love you, CC," whispered Niles in a hush, stroking his hands up and down her back.

"I know, baby. And I love you," she responded. They sat quietly for a few long minutes, holding each other.

As the fire sputtered out, CC murmured to Niles, "I'm going to make up for your missed Christmases, too."

Niles eased CC from his lap and stood to unplug the lights on their tree. He held out his hand, and CC twined her fingers with his as she stood.

"The only Christmas presents I'm ever going to need are you and our little girl," said Niles, following CC up the stairs.

"Well," he amended, "You, our little girl, and that prank we're going to pull on the Sheffields."

"The prank _I__'__m_ going to pull," corrected CC, "and you're right. It's going to be epic."


End file.
